Western Short StoryKatakiChuck Tyrell

Western Short Story

The name he received at birth was
Sojiro. The name he earned in the dark mountains of Hida was Kage,
the shadow. The name he used when he came to El Paso was Kay, because
it meant respect. And out of respect for his dead father, he meant to
put Jason Peligross to death.

I met Kay at the King’s Palace, one
of El Paso’s better saloons. I say met, but he came looking for me.

Our game of five-card draw was no more
than three hours old when Kay pushed his way through the batwings. He
was an odd-looking little man to our eyes, dressed in clothes the
color of desert sand. Blousey trousers like the Turks wear with
wrappings around the shins and the strangest moccasins I ever saw.
They reached a hand span above his ankles and they were split so the
big toe stood apart from the rest. The sash at his waist went around
twice and the knot was at the small of his back. A knife about the
size of a Bowie, but with what looked to be a straight blade, fit
behind the sash on the left side, like it was ready for a cross draw.

His shirt looked a bit like one an
Apache would wear, but its sleeves were long and floppy and came down
halfway on his hands. It didn’t have any buttons either. One side
was crossed over the other and held in place by the sash. His hair
was short, very short, like he’d shaved his head a couple of weeks
ago and a stubble had grown out. He also wore a headband of cotton
cloth the same desert color as his clothes. A few supplies, I found
out later, hung in netting cattycorner across his back, and he
carried a monster of a sword slung to his back, with its long handle
sticking up above his head.

To say he was a strange sight would be
entirely an understatement.

His dark face was expressionless as a
rock. He walked to the bar, but he slid his feet instead of
heel-and-toeing like most people, and his knees were slightly bent.

“Hey Chinaman. Getchor ass outta
here.”

Kay could have been deaf for all the
reaction the rowdy’s shout got from him.

“Hey, Chinaman. You got ears?”

The man doing the shouting pushed
himself away from the bar and turned to face Kay. “I’m saying no
one in this here saloon wants to drink with no Chinaman.”

Kay came to a stop at the bar. He put
both hands on the edge.

Charlie the bartender ambled over, his
face none too welcoming.

Kay gave Charlie a short nod, a kind of
a bowing of his head. “Sir,” he said. “Looking for a man, I
am.”

Before Charlie could open his mouth,
the rowdy who’d shouted at Kay strode over and put a hand on Kay’s
shoulder as if to turn him. “We—“

He started to give Kay what for, but
that little man—he stood no more than about five six—that little
man took the rowdy’s hand and twisted it somehow and the rowdy went
to his knees, howling in pain. “Quiet,” Kay said, applying some
pressure for emphasis.

The rowdy shut up. I guess he figured
out that if he didn’t move, it didn’t hurt, because he was real
careful.

Kay faced Charlie again. “Sir,
looking for a man, I am. Is he here?”

“Who?” Charlie asked.

“Kensington St. George,” Kay said,
but it sounded like Ken Jing Tone San Joji.

“Who?” Charlie said.

Kay held the rowdy with one hand and
fished a piece of paper from inside his shirt. He handed the paper
over.

Charlie took a look at the paper and
handed it back. He turned and pointed at our table. “Kensington St.
George is right over there,” he said. I scraped my chair back and
stood.

Kay gave the rowdy’s hand a tweak and
he yowled. “Stay,” Kay said. He let go of the hand and walked
that smooth sliding stride toward our table. He came around until he
was about six feet from me.

As he came, I turned to face him.

“Ken Jing Tone sama?” he
said. The rise at the end made it sound like a question.

“Yes,” I said. “My name is
Kensington St. George.”

Kay slapped his hands to his sides and
gave me a stiff bow, bending at the waist but keeping his back and
neck straight as the proverbial ramrod. “Pleasure,” he said. “Buy
you, I want. We talk?”

“Go ahead,” I said.

Kay turned and started for the
batwings. Two steps and he realized I hadn’t moved. He stopped and
faced me again. “Go ahead? You say, go ahead. I do. Not enough?”

The two steps separated Kay from the
card players at the table. Far enough, the rowdy figured, I guess.
“Goldam Chinaman,” he hollered, scrambling to his feet.

Kay watched the rowdy, his eyes almost
shut. I could only see about half of the irises. He seemed not to be
breathing and stood as motionless as I’ve ever seen a man stand.

The rowdy scrabbled for his six-gun.
“You’re dead meat,” he screamed.

Kay made a quick flicking motion with
his right hand, and the rowdy howled. Something like a 4-pointed spur
rowel stuck out of the rowdy’s wrist, one of the points buried deep
into the joint. He dropped to his knees again, his off hand
supporting the wrist with the rowel sticking out of it. The fingers
of his hand were splayed and he couldn’t seem to close them. Kay
walked over in the slip-slide stride and pulled the 4-point rowel
out. At the same time, he snaked the rowdy’s six-gun from its
holster. I could tell Kay was no stranger to guns.

“King,” I said to King Fisher. He
sat in on card games of a time, even though he owned King’s Palace.

“Yeah?”

“Lend me your office for a few
minutes? I’m curious as to what this stranger thinks he can buy
from me.”

“Help yourself.”

Kay dumped the bullets from the rowdy’s
Colt SAA onto the bar and handed the gun to Charlie.

The rowdy sat cross-legged, holding his
wounded wrist to his chest.

“Stay,” Kay said to him, and looked
at me.

I waved at the door at the back of the
saloon. “In there,” I said. “Come on.” I started for the
office door, my boots clomping on the plank floor. I couldn’t hear
if Kay was following, so I looked over my shoulder. He could have
reached out and touched me. He was that close.

I prided myself on being a man people
couldn’t sneak up on, but Kay could have had my bacon anytime. He’d
been in King’s Palace for going on a quarter of an hour, and the
only sounds I’d heard from him were words, and the slick whistling
sound the 4-pointed rowel made as it flew into the rowdy’s wrist.

Grabbing the knob, I opened the door
and motioned him in. He hesitated as if he wanted me to go in first.
I motioned again. He gave me a little bow and entered the office. I
followed him in and turned to shut the door. When I looked at him
again, he was on the floor, sitting on his legs. He put his hands on
the planking about shoulder-width apart and touched his forehead to
the floor between his hands.

“Hai. Yes. Please.” Again he
pulled something from the folds of his shirt and held it out to me.

I took it. A small package wrapped in
some kind of purple paper and tied with a ribbon that looked like
silk. I set it on King’s desk and pulled at the tails of the bow in
the ribbon. It came undone and the paper opened of its own accord.

“Jayzus.” A stack of strange gold
pieces, ten high. I picked one up. An oblong piece of gold about
three inches long and one and a half wide. Felt like a couple or
three ounces. Say two and a half. The packet was about eight hundred
dollars in gold.

“Hunt Jay Song,” Kay said. “I
follow. You find. I kill.” His face and his eyes said Jason
Peligross was dead.

Anyone who hunted Jason Peligross
hunted trouble. I picked up the pile of gold coins, the wrapping
paper, and the silk ribbon and held them out to Kay. “Nope,” I
said. “No can do.”

He sat there on his legs, his hands on
his thighs. Tears welled in his eyes and threatened to spill over his
lower lids. Once more placing his hands flat on the floor, he lowered
his forehead slowly to touch the planking. “I’m so sorry,” he
said, his English suddenly more fluent. “It is very important to
find this man Jason Peligross. He killed my father. Here.
In El Paso. Almost twelve years ago.”

Kay reached inside his loose shirt and
came up with yet another item; a paper, rolled and flattened, with
the ends folded over. It had something on it that looked to me like a
turkey track. He pointed at the track. “In my language, this reads
KATAKI. When word of my father’s death reached us, my lord
Asaharu gave me this KATAKI paper. It says I can kill Jay Song
Pelly Gross. My right. Our justice says the second son must take the
life of the one who robbed life from our father.”

“That piece of paper doesn’t make
it legal to kill in Texas,” I said.

Kay shrugged. “I must,” he said.
“It is my sadame, my fate. Will you assist? Will you find
the man who killed my father?”

I didn’t answer right away, and my
indecision must have been written on my face.

Kay nodded. “Ah so,” he
said, and shifted so he was sitting cross-legged on the floor. He
carefully took the knife from his sash and pulled it from its
lacquered sheath. He laid the sheath on the floor pointing away from
him, and placed the knife so the sheath held the blade off the floor.
And what a blade! Polished to a mirror finish, it had some kind of
pattern near the cutting edge. It looked like maybe the edge and the
body of the blade were not the same kind of steel. If it could cut as
good as it looked, that was one wicked knife.

He put the pile of gold coins off to
the side, removed his sword and back packet and put them by the
coins, then took a small sheaf of papers from the fold of his shirt,
separated one sheet, and used it to wrap the blade, leaving about two
inches at the point bare. He gave me a long look. “I see that you
are not ready to help me find Jay Song Pelly Gross,” he said. “If
I cannot find and kill him, then I have no reason for life myself.”

I had no idea what was going on and
just stood there like a dumb ox, as the saying goes.

“Ken sama, I am very happy to
know you,” Kay said. “Sayonara.”

He slipped his shirt from his shoulders
and pulled his arms from the sleeves so it fell away and left him
bare to the waist. Whoever thought him a little man had another think
coming. His stomach looked like knotted ropes, and muscles swam
beneath the skin of his arms. His shoulders bulged, and if he’d not
been a man, I would have wondered at the size of his chest.

“Stand to my left, please,” he
said.

Not knowing what else to do, I took the
position he indicated.

Kay picked up the knife by the blade.
The paper he’d wrapped around it kept the edge from cutting his
hand. He put the fingers of his left hand at a point just under his
ribs, and placed the point of the knife at the tip of his fingers. “I
go now to comfort the spirit of my father,” he said, and pushed the
point of the knife into his belly.

2

The instant I saw the blood, I jerked
my 6-inch Colt Lightning from my own sash and lambasted Kay in the
head hard enough to lay him out.

He came to at Doc Reynold’s place,
but he couldn’t move because I’d tied him to the bed, wrists and
ankles. The doc had placed an adhesive plaster over folded square of
gauze on the puncture wound in Kay’s belly. “Not serious,” the
doctor said.

When I saw Kay looking at me, I cocked
my Lightning and let the muzzle wander in his direction.

He glared.

“Ease off,” I said. “Jason
Peligross may be easy enough to find. He’s high on the Ranger’s
wanted list, and he’s got a hideout in Chihuahua, across the border
into Mexico.”

Kay relaxed. “Take the ropes off, Ken
sama.”

“I don’t want you trying to cut
yourself open again,” I said. “Or me either, for that matter.”

“That I will not do,” he said. “Now
I know somewhere I can find Jay Song Pelly Gross.” He paused. “Can
you show me where he is?”

“We’ll see.”

“Will you?” Kay’s face was no
longer the slab of granite it had been in the office of the King’s
Palace. He had a relaxed maybe even pleasant expression. I untied
him.

He bounded from the bed. “Can we go
now? “He slipped into his loose-fitting shirt and tied it in place
with the sash. He checked his carrying net, put it on over his
shoulder, then slung his big sword. Kay stood in front of me, legs
spread slightly apart, a deceptively small man with death in his
eyes. “I am ready,” he said.

I had to smile. “Not so fast. Let me
talk to the Rangers. Maybe I can pinpoint Jason Peligross’s
hideout.”

“Pinpoint?”

Find out exactly where he is.”

“Then we go?”

“When we’re ready.” Somehow it
seemed that I’d agreed to go with Kay to find the killer of his
father. So be it.

Doc Reynolds rapped on the doorframe.
“Sounds like the patient can be released,” he said.

“What do we owe you?” I said.

“A dollar would cover it,” he said.

I paid him. “Come on, Kay.”

“Do you have a place to stay?” I
asked when we got outside.

“Hai.”

“Go get some rest, then,” I said.
“Come to the Regis Hotel tomorrow morning. Then we’ll talk about
going after Jason Peligross.”

Jason Peligross made a name for himself
in ’68 when he and his gang held up an entourage of Japanese
dignitaries headed for the west coast. Most stood by as Peligross’s
men ransacked the wagons. They left the paraphernalia and took only
the gold. One of the Japanese objected when Peligross opened a
lacquered box and found only a scroll, which he dumped on the ground.

The young man screamed at Peligross and
charged him with a long knife.

Peligross shot him through the body but
he kept coming. A second shot smashed the young man’s left
shoulder. He staggered, then straightened and took three more long
steps toward Peligross, the knife outstretched and seeking blood. The
tip barely reached Peligross’s gunhand, which held a Colt Army
1861. Just the tip, but it was enough to sever his little finger
between the first and second joints, and slash the ring finger above
it.

The young man died.

The entourage, in flowing kimonos and
hair bound in topknots, let the young man be buried in El Paso,
though it was their custom to cremate the dead. They cut the topknot
from his head and put it in a plain wooden box. This part of the
young man thus returned to Japan.

Now Kay came to El Paso to claim a life
for the one that was taken, as was his custom. And he hired me to
find Jason Peligross. After he disappeared toward whatever lodgings
he had, I went to Rosa’s, which sits on the south bank of the Rio
Grande, the river the Mexicans call Rio Bravo del Norte. The
Rio is unruly at times and not always content to follow its usual
course. Rosa’s has been washed away twice that I know of, and owner
Pedro Aguilar always builds another adobe structure in the same
place. I never asked him why it’s called Rosa’s Cantina.

Funny, the town north of the river is
just plain old El Paso, but the one south of it is El Paso del Norte.
Don’t ask me why.

I could hear the music from Rosa’s as
I rode across the bridge on Stanton Street. Hitching my roan Pete out
front, I pushed my way through the men who stood with drinks in their
hands, watching of a young Mexican girl twirl to the music of a
mariachi band. When she spun, her skirts flew out and up and the men
shouted and whistled at the sight of her shapely legs.

Shapely legs had not drawn me to
Rosa’s, though I appreciate the female form as much as the next
man. Vicente, the man behind the bar, came over when I beckoned. He
put a hand behind one ear and leaned close to hear what I said.

“¿El Señor
Pedro está aquí?” I asked.

“Sí.”

“¿Puedo
hablar con él?”

“Momento.” Vicente
disappeared through a door at the back of the room.

Pedro came out, both hands extended.
“Kensington, amigo.
¿Cómo está?” Pedro Aguilar
had the face of a choirboy, complete with cherub smile and dimpled
cheek. He was probably the toughest, most dangerous man south of the
Pecos.

The mariachi music stopped. Men drifted
to tables, and a young cowboy reached for the dancer’s hand,
probably asking her to sit and drink with him.

“Keep your filthy hands off my girl,
cowboy!”

A way opened between the blocky
red-faced man who’d called out and the cowboy. “Mister, I don’t
know who you are,” the cowboy said, “but any girl working at
Rosa’s can drink with a customer. So back off.”

People cleared out from behind the
young man.

“You lay a hand on her and I’ll
kill you, cowboy.”

“Move aside, Felina,” the cowboy
said. He touched the girl with his left hand, but never took his eyes
off the man. “You’re welcome to try, mister, but I’d rather buy
you a drink than see you dead.”

The man’s face got even redder. “I
said, don’t touch her!”

The cowboy stood with his feet
shoulder-width apart and his hands hanging naturally at his sides.

“How often men die over our tarts,”
Pedro said. “Such a shame.”

The blocky man fumbled for his gun,
which was shoved into his waistband.

The cowboy waited patiently until the
barrel of the old Colt cleared the man’s belt. Then, in a smooth,
lightning-quick motion, his right hand snaked a Remington Army from
its holster, the web of his thumb raking the hammer back as he drew.
The six-gun pointed at the man’s belly, cocked and ready to fire,
before his gun even came level.

“That’s it,” the cowboy said.
“It’s over and you lost. Leave and you won’t have to die.”

Someone started to laugh. Then the
whole room was laughing. The cowboy put his gun away and turned
toward the girl he’d called Felina.

The man howled like a wounded beast.
His trigger finger tightened and his gun belched smoke and flame, the
explosion cutting the laughter off as neatly as snuffing out a
candle. The bullet plowed into the floor. The man dropped to his
knees, sobbing. The cowboy didn’t even bother to turn around.

Pedro signalled two men to take the
sobbing would-be gunman out. “Come. Good tequila awaits,” he
said.

I took another look at the young
cowboy. He sat with Felina, his face animated as he regaled her with
tall stories such as men tell, or so I supposed.

Pedro led me into his little cubbyhole
of an office. Well, not an office in the Anglo meaning of the word,
but the jefe’s room. “So, amigo. What brings
you to El Paso del Norte?”

I told Pedro of Kay and why he’d come
to El Paso. Then I said, “He’s determined to find Jason
Peligross. He hired me to point him in the right direction, but I’m
no good in Mexico. Who do you suggest I get to help?”

Pedro chuckled. “Amigo, there
is none better than the young cowboy you just saw refrain from
killing another man. Johnny Havelock. Yo no sé, amigo, but
the Yaquis of Sonora call him El Invisible, he who cannot be
seen.

“Johnny Havelock.” I chewed on the
idea for a while. “Do you think he’d agree?”

“¿Quién sabe? You can
ask. He sits in Rosa’s with beautiful Felina. And he sips, he only
sips at a little tequila, with many many limes. Madre de Dios,
he will cost me mucho dinero for the limes. Afortunadamente,
Felina consumes a great quantity of tea, which is also called
whiskey, but does not get her stumbling drunk.” Pedro smiled at his
own humor.

“Could I talk to Johnny Havelock here
in your room, amigo?”

“If he will come, es posible,”
Pedro said.

He went to the door, opened it, and
signalled to the man who stood nearby. He spoke quietly and quickly
to him in Spanish too fast and too low for me to hear and understand.

“Sí, jefe,” the guard said.

In moments, a light knock at the door.

“Adelante,” Pedro said.

The door opened. The young cowboy came
in, relaxed with a small smile on his dark face. “¿Desea
hablar conmigo, jefe?” he said.

He stood relaxed, but he stood ready.

I got up.

“Johnny, this is my friend,” Pedro
said. “He wished to speak about some business with you.”

Havelock gave me a sharp glance, no
more. “Does your friend have a name?” He spoke to Pedro, who
waved a hand at me.

“Havelock turned slightly so both
Pedro and I were in his field of vision.

Havelock almost smiled. “I could use
a man-size steak,” he said. “I’ll be there.” He stepped to
the door. “Con
permiso, jefe,” he said.

“Por nada,”
Pedro replied. “Hasta la vista.”

“Tomorrow, then,” Havelock said to
me, and he was gone. Nor was he among the carousers in Rosa’s
Cantina when I left.

3

Kay arrived at the Regis sometime
before I even got up, not that I’m an early riser. He stood in
front, straw basket on his head. He stood motionless. His eyes closed
and his hands steepled before his chest. I could hear him mumbling
some kind of prayer. He faced the sun, so maybe that had something to
do with it.

“Good morning, Kay,” I said.

He turned and bowed. “Ohayo
gozaimasu, Ken sama.
When do we go find Jay Song Pelly Gross?”

“A man named Havelock will come to
speak with you about it.”

“When?”

“At noon. We will eat together.”

He nodded. “I understand. I will
return then.”

“Where are you going?”

Kay gave me his deadpan look. “Chinamen
are okay only with Chinamen, even when they are from Japan.” He
walked slowly up San Francisco Street, hands steepled, once more
mumbling his prayer.

Everybody on San Francisco Street,
walking, riding, or driving, craned their necks to watch Kay. Not
often do you see a man with a straw basket on his head walking heel
and toe down the street, ignoring traffic and mumbling to himself.
More than one shook his head as if he thought Kay was crazy.

I stepped into Tully’s, just to the
side of the Regis, for breakfast.

Just as I got my second cup of coffee
and was about to dig into scrambled eggs and bacon backed up with
fried potatoes and onions, Buffalo Carter walked in. He took a quick
look around and made straight for my table.

“Kensington,” he said, leaning over
so his voice didn’t carry to the other three people breakfasting at
Tully’s. “Word’s out that you’re going into Mexico.”

I raised my eyebrows and played
ignorant. “Really? Wherever did you get that idea?”

Buffalo looked left and right, then
leaned even closer. An inch and he’d have been whispering in my ear
like a lover. I shifted away slightly.

“Someone seen you at Rosa’s last
night,” he said. “That someone saw Johnny Havelock go into Pedro
Aguilar’s back room while you and Pedro was in there. And when
Havelock come back, he wasn’t in no mood to play with Felina. She
asked him why. He looked at her kinda funny and told her he might be
taking a little paseo into Mexico. Anyone could figure out the
rest.” Buffalo took a deep breath. “You’ll need guns, Ken. I’d
like to go along. Watch your back, kinda.”

He stood back, an expectant look on his
face.

“Don’t know what you’re talking
about,” I said.

“Shee-it. Don’t know what I’m
talking about my ass. Kensington kiss-my-ass St. George. Do I look
dumb to you? Do you think I ain’t seen that Chinaman? Do you think
I don’t know what kinda man Johnny Havelock is? Shee-it. You’re
headed into Mexico. No lie. What you need is an army, but that ain’t
gonna happen. So if you can’t get an army, you’d better have some
good guns. I’m good. Not as good as Johnny, but good. Maybe
better’n you.”

I had no reply.

Buffalo gave me a long look, then
shrugged. He said nothing more, just turned his back on me and left,
his displeasure plain in the set of his shoulders. Two men of the ilk
of Buffalo Carter were the equivalent of a dozen horse soldiers. I
wanted to call him back, but could do nothing until Kay and Havelock
met. Instead of brooding about the situation, I ordered three eggs,
scrambled, sowbelly bacon, fried potatoes, and sourdough biscuits. A
man can’t think properly when his stomach’s empty.

Strictly speaking, I’d made no
commitment to take Kay into the wilds of Chihuahua. Strictly
speaking, I’d not taken even one of his oblong gold pieces, so I’d
made no promise. But we’d need to cross the Rio Grande and get lost
in the rough and tumble country south of the border before the rumors
reached the ears of Jason Peligross.

By noon, I’d found no answers except
to go, by God and by golly. I sat on the porch of the Regis, chair
tipped back on two legs, contemplating the problem when Johnny
Havelock came around the corner of Chiricahua and San Francisco
Streets, and Kay mumbled his way east on San Francisco, retracing the
course he’d taken away earlier. They reached the Regis at almost
the same time. Johnny Havelock climbed the steps to the porch. Kay
stayed in the street, watching.

Kay slowly mounted the steps, his upper
face hidden by the straw basket on his head.

“Kay is from Japan,” I said. “Jason
Peligross killed his father in ’68. He’s got a license from Japan
to kill Peligross.”

“Easy to say, hard to do,” Havelock
said.

“You’d be surprised.”

“Who is this man?” Kay said. He
tipped the straw basket back, only now I could see it was made of
thin strips of wood.

“His name is Johnny Havelock. He
knows the way to Jayson Peligross’s hideout.”

Havelock stood still while Kay examined
him. I watched Kay’s eyes flick from the light brown Stetson on
Havelock’s head to the off-white linen shirt to the faded canvas
trousers stuffed into knee-high Apache moccasins.

“Wait up, now,” Havelock said. “Why
should I take you all into Mexico?”

“Jay Song Pelly Gross robbed my
people. He threw our sacred scroll on the ground and killed my father
who tried to keep the scroll from touching earth.”

Havelock stood silent.

Kay’s words were full of passion but
his face was placid as if he were reciting his schoolwork. “My lord
sent me to Hida to become, what do you say? Ninja. I trained for one
cycle of years – one cycle is twelve. My father died twelve years
ago. Pelly Gross must die now.”

He spoke to Havelock directly. “You
show me. I will kill. Me.” Kay looked at me, then back at Havelock.
“How much?” he said.

Havelock just stood there, his hard
eyes on Kay.

Kay dropped to his knees like he had in
King Fisher’s office. He put the basket off to the side, placed
both hands on the porch, and touched his forehead to the planking.
“Please, Havelock sama. Please help me find Pelly Gross, who
killed my father. If I cannot kill him, I must kill me.”

“He will, too,” I said. “He
almost put that long knife of his into his own gut a couple of nights
ago. He’s dead serious about this.”

“Okay,” Havelock said. “Two
horses each. Two canteens. One day down, one day back, one day
leeway. I’ll get jerky. You get coffee, though fires may be a
problem. Be a good idea to haul along some biscuits. We’ll get
whatever else we need on the trail.”

“How much?” Kay asked.

Havelock didn’t say anything for a
long moment. “Mr. Kay,” he said, “when and if we get back,
we’ll see how much the trip was worth to you.”

To me he said, “Mr. St. George,
you’ll want to dress right. Red sashes are out and moccasins are
always better than boots. Desert colors if you have them.”

“I’m not a complete tenderfoot,”
I said.

“You’re not used to the desert,
sir, or you would not be asking me. No offense meant.”

I shut up.

“We’ll leave an hour before dawn,”
Havelock said. “Have your horses and supplies ready. I’ll bring
my own.” He stepped down into the street. “Gentlemen, good day.”
He strode down the street, turned onto Chiricahua and disappeared. He
didn’t even eat that steak he’d wanted.

Kay nodded. “Very good,” he said.
“I will return tomorrow morning at the hour of the tiger. He went
back the way he came, basket on his head, mumbling as he walked heel
to toe, ignoring horses, riders, buggies, and pedestrians alike.

4

Havelock rode a buckskin and led a
lineback dun. I had Pete, my regular strawberry roan, and a grulla
I’d rented at the livery. Kai showed up afoot.

“Horses?” Havelock said.

“No,” Kay said.

“You’ll never make it without
horses.”

“I do not ride. We go.”

Kay had changed his head basket for a
wide band of off-white cotton. The rest of his garb was exactly like
when I’d first seen him. The big sword’s handle stuck up over his
shoulder, its hilt and hand guard covered with a brocaded silk sack.

Havelock shrugged. “We’ll take
Stanton to the bridge. On the Mexican side, we’ll cut west into the
mountains. Let’s go.”

He reined the buckskin around and
started off, leading the dun. I followed. Kay walked, staying even
with my stirrup, matching his stride to that of my buckskin. “It’ll
be a long walk,” I said. He stared straight ahead like he was in a
trance.

Havelock never looked back. Just past
Rosa’s Cantina, he took a narrow way that wound between adobe walls
that protected the wealthier citizens in their compounds and jacals
of sticks daubed with mud and topped with brush thatches where peons
lived. Mangy dogs lay panting in the shadows of the walls and
children in cotton shifts without pants or shoes stopped their games
to watch the gringos ride by. What they thought, I have no idea.
Strange to me, the scents rising from the poor section of the El Paso
del Norte didn’t have the pungent sewer smell of the poorer
neighborhoods in Anglo areas of El Paso.

Beyond the city, Havelock took an
eyebrow of a trail into the mountains. Almost like a runoff, but with
occasional hoof prints of goats, or maybe mule deer. The horses
humped upward, carrying our weight as they were trained to do, but
labouring. Even the extra mounts we led breathed heavily as we topped
out. Kay looked like he’d been on a stroll around some quiet park.

We pulled up at a wide place in the
trail that gave us a view across a high plain at least twenty miles
across. Octotillo and candelilla and paloverde dotted the flats while
oaks and piñons and junipers climbed the hillsides beside us.

“A day down and a day back?” I
said.

“We don’t have to cross the flat,”
Havelock said. “Peligross’s place is about 10 miles south long
the foothills.”

Kay sat cross-legged on a flat-topped
hunk of sandstone, his back held straight and stiff, his eyes closed,
and his forearms on his thighs with his thumbs and forefingers
forming circles and his other fingers held out straight. I took off
my hat and wiped away the sweat. Kay’s skin looked clean and free
of any perspiration. He didn’t seem to be breathing.

I took a pull from the four-quart
canteen that hung from my saddle horn. “Kay,” I said. “What’s
your plan?”

After a moment, he opened his eyes. “I
will go to Pelly Gross in the night,” he said. “In the night,
even if he has many, I am but a shadow. I will kill him and we will
return. Ken sama. Havelock sama. You will wait.”

Simple as that.

We didn’t push the horses and Kay had
no trouble matching the pace.

Havelock called a rest stop just short
of noon. He pulled some jerky from his saddlebags and offered me a
piece. I took it. Kay sat cross-legged on the ground like he had on
the sandstone earlier.

“Kay,” Havelock said. “Jerky?”

Kay opened his eyes. “I cannot take
food until Pelly Gross is dead,” he said. He closed his eyes.

Havelock shrugged. We chewed the dried
beef and swallowed tepid water. Kay remained completely motionless,
as if he were some kind of carved statue.

As the sun dipped toward the jumble of
mountains in the west, Havelock pulled up in a copse of oak and
juniper. He pointed to a cut running into the eastern hills. “Jason
Peligross has a hacienda up that draw,” he said. “They’ll be
men on watch, and they’ll spot us if we go any closer.”

“How far?” Kay asked. He looked as
fresh as the moment we left the Regis Hotel.

“Two miles. Maybe three,” Havelock
said.

“I must prepare,” Kay said. “Then
go kill Pelly Gross. You,” he said, pointing at Havelock, “and
you,” pointing at me, “wait for me here. When the day comes, if I
am not returned, go back to El Paso.”

He put a hand into the fold of his
shirt and brought out a packet like the one he’d shown me at
Rosa’s. He handed it to me. “Pay Havelock sama for me, Ken
sama, if I am not returned.”

“Of course,” I said, and accepted
the packet of gold coins.

“I must prepare,” he said again.

“No fire?” I said to Havelock.

“Not a good idea.”

Pete took a healthy mouthful of
chamise. Desert-bred, he was content to stay where he was. I loosened
the cinch but left the saddle on him. I’d only use the extra horse
if we had to run.

Kay separated himself from us a few
feet and once again assumed the cross-legged position. He steepled
his hands and said something that sounded like namuamidabutsu.
He repeated it three times, then bowed until his forehead touched the
ground.

A long moment later, he repeated the
phrase and returned to his upright cross-legged position. He spent
the remaining daylight sharpening his weapons. A half dozen of those
rowel-like pointy things that he threw with such accuracy. Two little
knives plucked from the tops of his split-toed moccasins. The long
knife in his sash. Then he worked on the three-foot blade of the
sword he’d carried slung to his back.

Finally, he stood. He shoved the long
knife and the sword into the sash around his waist. The other weapons
went back to their hiding places.

Standing with his feet splayed slightly
and his hands clamped to his sides, Kai bowed first to me, then to
Havelock. “I thank you, Ken sama, Havelock sama. I
now go to kill Pelly Gross.” He moved away toward the draw that led
to the Peligross hacienda. He made no sound. Moments later, we could
no longer see him.

“The man is somewhat better than
good,” Havelock said. I could only agree.

We waited through the night, Havelock
and I, taking two-hour watches. The morning came, but Kay didn’t
show.

“He’s not coming,” I said.

“You don’t know that,” Havelock
said.

So we stayed another night. Kay didn’t
show. There was nothing for us to do but return to El Paso.

5

As soon as we reached El Paso, I gave
the packet of gold coins to Havelock.

“Don’t sit right,” he said, “Kay
not making it back and all. I shoulda known it was too easy. Coulda
been someone waiting for him. Maybe they got news Kay was after
Peligross.”

“Not your fault, Havelock. Kay had to
do it his way or die trying.”

Havelock rode out a couple of days
later. He didn’t say where he was going.

I began to think it was time for me to
move on as well. Maybe visit Paladin in San Fran. That afternoon a
young Mexican boy showed up at the Regis, looking for me. “Por
favor,” he said. “El
jefe quiere que usted venga a verlo.”

So I climbed on Pete and followed the
boy across Stanton Bridge to El Paso del Norte. Pedro waited in the
main room at Rosa’s. “Amigo, amigo. Come. Come. I have
something I thought you should hear.” He ushered me into the back
room. He waved at the rawhide chairs. “Sit down. Sit down,” he
said.

I sat.

“Tell me, have you tasted coffee from
Chiapas? No? We’ll have some.” He sent the boy for coffee.

I waited. Pedro would tell me why he’d
asked for me to come when the time was right.

The coffee came. Pedro filled his with
goat’s milk and great lumps of raw sugar. I drank mine black –
rich, thick, and nutty with flavor.

“Aah. What’s that wonderful English
word you use for such as this?” Pedro lifted his pottery coffee
mug. “Ambrosia. Yes. That’s it. Ambrosia. Is this coffee not
tasty?”

“Delicioso.” I couldn’t
resist using a word or two of my border Spanish. Pedro gave me a
painful smile.

When the boy came to collect the coffee
mugs, Pedro said, “Traigo aquí al manco.”

One-handed man!

“Sí, jefe.”

I didn’t ask Pedro why. He’d called
me for a reason. Perhaps the one-handed man was it.

Pedro did not explain. We waited, the
silence hanging between us.

A tap came at the door.

“Adelante,” Pedro said.

The man wore a sling to support his
right arm, which ended some three inches above where the wrist should
be. The stump was properly bandaged and it seemed there was no
putrification. Still, the wound was recent. Very recent. I looked at
Pedro, the question plain on my face.

“Kensington, you must listen to this
man,” Pedro said. “What he has to say should interest you, I
think.”

“Siéntese,” he said.
“Cuente su
historia.”

The man with one hand sat on the
remaining chair in Pedro’s office, and began to speak:

The hacienda of Jason Peligross is a
fortress. It stands on the hill above el arroyo de Santiago.
Ten men guard the approaches. Five more watch from inside the
hacienda walls. One walks the hallways to the south, one to the west,
one to the north. Thus Jason Pelligross is safe. Thus no one holding
evil intent can even come near el jefe de los ladrones. In the
Hacienda de la Paloma, el jefe relaxes and drinks fine tequila
and good wine. In the Hacienda de la Paloma, women and children
laugh, and no harm ever befalls them. In the
Hacienda de la Paloma, el jefe
Pelligross is safe. Yet he always keeps a loaded pistol on his
desk. The pistol that killed his first man. An ancient pistol made in
Bélgica and used by men in New Orleans to settle quarrels in
duels. But el jefe is safe . . . was safe.

Then he came. “I am the shadow,” he
said.

Ten men guarded the approaches. He
found them all. They never saw him. They told me of a sudden pain in
the neck, as if iron tongs had grasped them. Then blackness. They
were still unconscious when I found them.

“I come to avenge my father,” he
said.

Four of the men guarding inside the
hacienda fell to the shadow. He trussed them with strings of woven
silk, tied their thumbs together and laced them to their ankles
behind their backs. He tied sticks into their mouths so they could
make no sound. He left them at their posts, and he came for el
jefe.

“My name is Sojiro,” he said. “The
ninja call me Kage, the shadow. But for this task I take the name of
Kay, which means respect in my language.”

El jefe said nothing. I stood
behind the draperies that cover the walls of el jefe’s room.
He shot a glance at me. The shadow did nothing. But I think he knew I
was there.

“Prepare to die, Jay Song Pelly
Gross,” he said. “Twelve years ago, you shot and killed my father
as he tried to protect a sacred scroll. Now you forfeit your life for
taking the life of my father.”

I watched as he withdrew a roll of
paper from his loose-fitting shirt. He shook the paper and it
unrolled, showing lines of dark black writing of a peculiar type. He
bowed to el jefe.

“This is the writing of my Lord
Asaharu from Japan. This writing says I have the right to kill him
who killed my father. That man is you, Jay Song Pelly Gross. This
night you will die.”

He took a cover from the handle of a
long sword he carried thrust in his sash. He stood ready, one foot
forward, knee bent; one leg back, knee bent. He placed his right hand
on the handle of the sword and his left upon its scabbard. El jefe
laughed, and I lunged from behind the tapestry, my pistol in my hand,
cocked and ready to fire.

“You are foolish,” the shadow said,
and cut off my arm. I did not even have time to pull the trigger. My
arm and my pistol fell to the floor. The shadow shook my blood from
his sword blade and returned it to its scabbard. I sank to the floor
and bled.

El jefe
no longer laughed. I tried to stop the bleeding by clutching
my arm tightly. The bleeding slowed. El jefe snatched up the
old pistol and cocked it. He stepped around the desk so there was
nothing between him and the shadow, who shifted his stance slightly
to confront el jefe directly. He stood like before, one hand
on the hilt of his sword, one hand on the scabbard. The shadow and el
jefe stood ten or twelve paces apart.

You will not believe what I have to
say. I’m sure you will not believe it. But the shadow pulled his
sword so fast that he was able to slice the leaden ball from pistol
in half. El jefe stood with his mouth open and eyes wide with
shock. The shadow leaped high in the air with a fearsome scream, like
a beast closing for the kill. He brought the blade of his sword
precisely down on the top of el jefe’s head. It split as the
leaden ball had split. El jefe dropped, his head hanging in
two pieces from his neck. The shadow wiped the blade of his sword
clean of blood with the paper that he said gave him the right to el
jefe’s life. He returned the sword to its scabbard.

“It is finished,” he said. Then he
took his headband off and bound my arm. He cut a piece from a chair
to make the binding into a tourniquet to stop my bleeding. “The
women can help you,” he said. He picked one half of a leaden ball
from the floor and put it in my remaining hand. “Take this,” he
said. “Go to Rosa’s Cantina and tell a man named Kensington St.
George what has happened.” Then he was gone.

In his left hand, the one-handed man
held out half a neatly sliced .50 caliber musket ball. His story was
true.

“Telegram for you, Mr. St. George,”
the front desk clerk said when I walked into the Regis. “From San
Francisco, it says.”